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The Wizard’s Edition of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch pulled a magic trick of its own—and vanished before customers could get a copy they’d already ordered.

Even great games can’t avoid controversy.

This time, Namco Bandai, publisher of the recent PS3 exclusive Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, is at the center of a pre-order fiasco involving an eBay merchant and a shortage of special Wizard Edition copies of the game.

Apparently, the eBay seller, PlayCanada, purchased hundreds of copies of the Wizard’s Edition which then somehow led to an overall shortage of the special edition—meaning that other customers never received their copy.

Namco Bandai has decided to send out $20 PlayNamco credits and a strategy guide to all the affected customers. Here’s their full statement:

NAMCO BANDAI Games America would like to officially offer clarification to certain stories and sentiments surrounding the Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Wizard’s Edition.

NAMCO BANDAI Games America would first like to acknowledge our fans that will not be receiving their copy of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Wizard’s Edition. This situation is truly unfortunate, having come about due to a glitch within our E-commerce provider’s ordering system. NAMCO BANDAI Games America continues to monitor the situation and is actively working with our E-commerce provider to offer remedies to each and every order. We are also working to ensure that a situation like this never happens again. We respectfully ask for our fans’ patience during this time.

NAMCO BANDAI Games America is not, nor has it ever, worked with or in conjunction with the EBay seller known as “PlayCanada” to sell units of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Wizard’s Edition at a price premium on EBay .

According to our records, this individual or group of individuals purchased Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Wizard’s Edition during the NinoStarter promotion period (August 2012); at which time, no limits were placed on how many units an individual could order.

PlayCanada’s claims that they officially worked with NAMCO BANDAI Games America to obtain their stock is entirely false.

We understand the $20 clubNamco voucher that has been offered to our affected fans may give little solace in place of an actual Wizard’s Edition package. It is unfortunate that we are unable to produce additional Wizard’s Edition units to fulfill all the extra orders; with that in mind, NAMCO BANDAI Games America will be giving the affected fans a 400 page hard bound copy of the Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch strategy guide which includes an exclusive code to unlock a Gold Hurly Familiar in the game in addition to the original $20 clubNamco voucher. Our E-commerce provider will be contacting the affected customers in the coming days with instructions on how to obtain their copy of the Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch strategy guide. We hope that this can give the affected consumers some comfort; NAMCO BANDAI truly does value and care about its fans.

Cold comfort, indeed. The game, as I noted in Part One of my review, is excellent, and it’s a shame that it’s already shrouded in controversy.

The publisher’s statement doesn’t quite clarify what happened behind the scenes beyond a “glitch” with an E-Commerce provider. These things happen, but it would be nice to know more details.

I don’t believe for a second that Namco Bandai would purposefully jeopardize their reputation and the game’s sales by actively working with a scalper on eBay, either, and unless some proof of that emerges, I would toss that notion into the rubbish pile. The fault appears to be with the E-Commerce provider, and Namco Bandai stands to gain nothing and lose quite a bit from the foible.

Nor do I fully understand how difficult or expensive it would be to manufacture more Wizard Edition sets, which include:

[...] a copy of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch for PlayStation®3, a 340 page hardcover physical copy of the Wizard’s Companion, the spellbook Oliver uses throughout his journey in the game. The full-color Wizard’s Companion contains a full bestiary of all the creatures found in the game along with in-depth item descriptions of the other world’s items, spells and background of its rich history. The limited-run Wizard’s Edition will also contain a plush doll of Drippy, Oliver’s guide through his adventures, as well as exclusive “golden mite” and “golden drongo” DLC familiars. An exclusive Wizard’s Edition coin, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Wizard’s Edition Special Music Selection CD and a set of 5 Ni no Kuni artwork cards.

So this is sort of an awesome package, especially if you end up loving the game. I know I’d be pretty disappointed if I got a gift-card and a strategy guide instead of a plush Drippy, the CD, and the bloody Spell Book. In fact, I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get this to begin with.

My take is simple: however difficult or expensive getting more of these made may be, a “spare no expense” approach would be in Nacmo Bandai’s best interest—especially in the long run.

The publisher has an opportunity here to really shine: mistakes are often perfect PR opportunities if managed properly.

Namco should send out a copy of the game to everyone affected by this along with the $20 card and the strategy guide and then, when new Wizard Edition sets become available, send those out as well.

Better still, have some people at Level-5 (art director, perhaps, or get the composer in on it) sign them. Make these special editions even more special. We love to feel special; we hate to feel like we’re being bought off by something second-best.

In the end, it’s a small price to pay to spin this fiasco into gold—gold that will surely find its way across social media and the internet, that lightning-fast distribution network that has so revolutionized the concept and importance of word of mouth. Similar to the way news of this mistake has spread, like a wildfire, across the web.

The flipside is that this is supposed to be a limited edition, and if you start producing more you could run into trouble. Fix that by calling it the Wizard’s Edition Plus or something and you’ve got an even more limited edition. But maybe there is legalese in the background that I’m missing.

For my part, I don’t believe a supply error, however egregious, is any reason to avoid this game. I’ve heard already from people who are refusing to play it now because of this mistake. I think that’s selling both the game, its developer, and potential players short on a great experience with Wrath of the White Witch. I understand the reasoning, I just disagree with it.

Mistakes happen, and while I think Namco Bandai is not going nearly far enough to make amends, I also don’t have any reason to believe they’re doing it out of spite. There are decisions and decision makers and we’re simply not privy to the behind the scenes.

Maybe in the end they’ll decide to spend whatever extra money it might cost to produce more Wizard’s Editions and send them out to the gamers who, before the game even hit shelves or was reviewed, were willing to spend their hard-earned dollars on it. These are their most committed customers, after all.

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I had not opened by copy of Ni No Kuni yet. So I brought it back to the store and got something else. I will not support the game until they make this right.

If they dont make it right. Im going to get the game used on the secondary market to make sure they dont get my money.

They need to Make a batch of Collectors editions for those that ordered them and did not get them. This 20 voucher and a guide book dose not ease the feelings of those that did not get their Collecors edition. ESP considering the collectors editions had 3 exclusive DLC characters and many already had the guide book for Ni No kuni.

Also If they reisue them I would not do anything more then have it be the same as the original WE. As you dont want to snub those or cheapen those that got theirs through normal means. It has to be the same thing as what was already out there for collectors purposes.

They really messed up big. But they used Digital River, a Company KNOWN for making huge mistakes.

You would rather miss out on this awesome experience, not support Level5 and Ghibli productions just to stick it Bamco? Who has managed this, at least moderately well. What? Yeah I’m sure some of the people who didn’t get the WE edition are a little bummed. But what good is it for anyone, getting worked up over this? A mistake is a mistake, even kids understand that, propably a lot of kids out there who dealt with this dissapointment a lot more maturely than this. They’re currently having a blast with this game, you know.. like the whole point of the game is..

If I end up supporting the company that did bad in this just too support the other companies no one learns a lesson. The good companies need to feel the pressure as well so they put pressure on the bad company to fix it.

If anything when the relaized they were up short they should have canceled reduce the multi orders and refunded them until each INDIVIDUAL had a copy. Then go back and fulfill the multi orders as best they could.

Cancelling preorders means you’re losing reputation AND money. Instead of feeding eBay scalpers, wouldn’t it be a MUCH more clever approach to make more units and actually EARN money selling them?? Is it really that hard??

I mean, you cannot have a better market research. People is out there, willing to give you a hundred bucks or more, c’mon! And yet you say no?? Why??

You have a large number of costumers, and they’ve already proven their interest paying double the original price.

Offer and demand, c’mon is not that hard.

Somebody is not doing it’s work propperly on Namco-Bandai. An that’s a matter of fact.

A set like this has parts coming from a lot of different manufacturers and the process of putting them together is time consuming and starts very early. In the potential time it takes to put more of these together, you don’t know what the second hand market will do with what’s already been made. Sure sets are fetching top dollar right now but these special editions sets are always big sellers at release and this is a widely publicized shortage. In a couple months, these things might take a huge dip as the second hand market becomes saturated and the people without this edition are probably over worrying about it (most of them are still going to get the game and take advantage of the damage control freebies). Finally, factor in the fact that Namco is already taking a hit financially from this and you end up with a very real possibility that new productions of this set would be more expensive than the damage control.